A decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit highlights the power dynamics around rights to collect and share data. It marks an important victory for environmental activists, and should also be of interest to all those who engage in citizen science, as well as community-based environmental monitoring.

The case arose after the Wyoming legislature passed a law titled Trespassing to Unlawfully Collect Resource Data that imposed civil and criminal liability on any person who crossed over private land in order to “access adjacent or proximate land where he collects resource data.” The statutory definitions of resource data included all kinds of data gathering activity from taking notes to photographing wildlife or taking samples of soil or water.

The backstory to the legislation involved efforts by environmental activists with the Western Watersheds Project to document the impact of cattle grazing on water quality, and to push for limits on grazing on public lands. These efforts were opposed by cattle ranchers, who apparently carry enough clout to push the legislature to enact such a law. A predecessor statute in 2015, titled Trespassing to Collect Data, created civil and criminal liability for collecting data on “open lands”. After the constitutionality of the 2015 law was challenged, it was amended to prohibit crossing private land without permission in order to collect data on “adjacent or proximate land” (which might be public land). It was this amended version that was considered by the appellate court.

The issue before the Court was not whether there was a broad right to collect resource data on either public or private land. Rather, it was whether the state, by creating new civil and criminal trespass penalties for those who crossed private land without permission in order to collect data on public land, violated the free speech rights of the data collectors. The plaintiffs’ argument was essentially that although there were already penalties for trespass on private land, the statute created additional penalties for those who trespassed on private land for the purpose of collecting data on public land. Thus, the court framed the issue as “not whether trespassing is protected conduct, but whether the act of collecting resource data on public lands qualifies as protected speech.” The court noted that the prohibited acts under the law involved “collecting water samples, taking handwritten notes about habitat conditions, making an audio recording of one’s observation of vegetation, or photographing animals”, so long as location data was also included.

The Court noted that a number of federal and state environmental statutes and regulations provided for public submission of environmental data as part of assessment and decision-making processes. The plaintiffs argued that a law restricting their ability to gather environmental data inhibited their ability to participate in such processes, thus limiting their freedom of speech. The Court agreed, noting that the First Amendment extends to the “creation” of speech. The Court observed that “An individual who photographs animals or takes notes about habitat conditions is creating speech in the same manner as an individual who records a police encounter”. The Court also found that the taking of samples, though “somewhat further afield of pure speech”, was protected. In this case, the samples were characterized by the Court as “information plaintiffs need to engage in environmental advocacy”. The Court also observed that the plaintiffs used the data they collected in advocacy activities, and that this type of political engagement was at the core of the First Amendment protection.

The Court does caution that there is no general “unrestrained right to gather information”. As a result, laws that, by banning activities incidentally prevent the ability to gather information about those activities would not run afoul of the First Amendment. In this way, a general prohibition on trespass does not offend the First Amendment, even if it means that someone would be equally barred from trespassing to gather information. What was problematic here was that the laws created new penalties that specifically applied to trespass for data gathering activities.

Although the legislation in this case might seem to be an outlier product of an aggressive stakeholder lobby of government, the issues it raises have a broader significance. Control over data, access to data and even the ability to create data are all crucially important in our data-driven society. My ongoing research explores issues of ownership, control and access to data – expect to see more posts on these topics over the course of the year.

In a press release issued on October 26, 2016, the Ontario Provincial Police announced that they would be adopting a new investigative technique – one that relies on cellphone tracking of ordinary members of the public. The use of this new technique is being launched in the context of the investigation of an unsolved murder that took place in Ottawa in 2015. Police are searching for leads in the case.

The OPP sought a Production Order from a justice of the peace. This order required major cellular phone service providers to furnish them with a list of cellphone numbers used in the vicinity of West Hunt Club and Merivale Road in Ottawa, between 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. on December 15, 2015. Production orders for cell phone information have become commonplace. Typically, however, they have been used to determine whether a person of interest to the police was in a certain area at a specific time. This is not the case here. In this case, the police intend to send text messages to the individual cell phone numbers provided by the phone companies. These messages will encourage recipients to visit a web site set up by the police and to respond to some questions. According to the press release, the production order did not include customer name and address information associated with the phone numbers. In theory, then, individual privacy is protected by the fact that an person who does not respond to the text message does provide any further identifying information to the police.

There is clearly a public interest in solving crimes. Where investigations have grown cold, new techniques may be important to finding justice for victims and their families. However, it is also important that any new investigative techniques are consistent with the principles and values that are an integral part of our justice system. Privacy advocates and the public have reason to be concerned about this new investigative technique. Here are some of the reasons why:

First, production orders of this kind provide completely inadequate opportunities to hear and consider the privacy interests of affected individuals. Persons accused of crimes can always challenge in court the way in which the police went about collecting the evidence against them. They can argue that their privacy interests were violated and that search warrants should never have been issued. However, ordinary members of the public have little practical recourse when their privacy rights are infringed by investigations of crimes that have nothing to do with them. In a decision of the Ontario Superior Court (which I wrote about here) Justice Sproat reviewed production orders for massive amounts of cell phone data sought by police. He was sharply critical of both the seeking and the granting of a production order for quantities of cell phone customer data that far exceeded what was genuinely required for the purpose of the investigation. The case impacted the privacy rights of the broad public (it involved the data of over 43,000 customers) yet as is so often the case, the public had no way to learn of or challenge the production order before it was granted. In that case, it was the Telcos – Rogers and Telus – who challenged the production orders and raised privacy issues before the courts. Without this intervention, there would have been no voice for the privacy interests of ordinary citizens and no means of reviewing the legitimacy of the order.

Second, production orders of this kind come with no safeguards for the protection of data after it has been used by police.Production orders typically do not contain directions on how long data can be retained, whether it should be destroyed after a certain time, what other uses it might (or should not) be put to, or what safeguards are required to protect it while it is in the hands of police. The lack of such safeguards was commented upon by Justice Sproat in the case mentioned above. He was of the view that this was an issue for Parliament to address. Parliament has yet to do so.

In its press release, the OPP analogized what it was doing to police going through a neighborhood where a crime has taken place and knocking on doors to see if anyone has seen or heard anything that might be relevant. The analogy is problematic. The existence and location of houses and apartment units are matters of public record – they are in plain view. However, data about the cell phone usage of individuals, along with their location information, as they carry out their day to day activities are not. When police seek access to information that allows them to identify the locations of thousands of individuals who are not suspected of engaging in criminal activity, they are doing more than knocking on doors.

There needs to be a public conversation about how and when police get to tap into the massive volumes of data collected about the minutiae of our daily activities by private sector companies. The use of cell phone data production orders by the OPP in this case merely adds to list of subjects for that conversation. Because the use of this data by police is now to identify and contact people who are themselves not the targets of criminal investigation, these individuals effectively have no way in which to raise privacy concerns. This is a conversation that must be led by Parliament and that most likely will require new law.

A 2016 European Commission report titled Survey report: data management in Citizen Science projects provides interesting insights into how such projects manage the data they collect. Proper management is, of course, essential to ensure that the collected data can be used and reused by project leaders as well as by other downstream users. It is relevant as well to the protection of the privacy of citizen participants. The authors of this report surveyed a large number of citizen science projects. From the 121 responses received they distilled findings that explore the diversity of the citizen science projects, and that reveal a troubling lack of thorough data management practices. A significant shortcoming for many projects was the lack of appropriate data licences to govern reuse of either raw or aggregate data collected.

There has been growing pressure on those carrying out research using public resources to make the fruits of the research – including the research data – publicly available for consultation, verification or reuse. But doing so is not as simple as a binary open/closed choice. There are a number of different questions that researchers must address: Should the raw data be made open or only the aggregate data? Should it be immediately available or available only after an embargo period? Is all data suitable for release or should some be protected for public policy reasons (such as protecting privacy)? And what, if any, terms and conditions should be imposed on reuse?

The authors of the EC report, Sven Schade and Chrysi Tsinaraki, found that overall there was a relatively high level of data sharing from citizen science projects. Significantly, 38% of the respondents to their survey provided access to their raw data; 37% provided access to aggregate data and 30% provided access to both. One interesting observation in this respect was that 68% of those respondents who provided access to their raw data also included within this dataset personal identifiers of citizen contributors to the project. Such data might be advertently collected, as where individuals provide personal information with their data uploads. In some cases, the scope of personal information might be significant. Contributions to a project might include geolocation information and geodemographic details. Schade and Tsinaraki asked respondents about their practices when it came to obtaining informed consent to data collection from project participants; they found that 25% of respondents did not obtain such consent whereas 53% relied upon a generic terms of use document to obtain consent. It was not entirely clear whether the consent being sought related to privacy issues or to obtaining any necessary rights to use or disseminate the data being collected (which might, for example, include copyright protected photographs). In any event, the results of the survey suggest that there is a significant lack of attention to both privacy and IP rights issues in citizen science projects.

On the issue of data licensing, Schade and Tsinaraki found that the conditions imposed on reuse by different projects varied. A majority of those who made data available believed that the data was in the public domain, while others imposed conditions such as non-commercial or share-alike restrictions. When asked which license they used to achieve these goals, 32 out of 56 respondents indicated that they used one of the commonly available template licences such as Creative Commons or Open Data Commons. A surprising number of respondents indicated that no particular licence was used. While data released in this way might be presumed to be “open”, the usefulness of the data might well be hampered by a lack of clarity regarding the scope of permitted reuse.

In addition to providing access to data, the authors of the Report asked whether citizen science researchers allowed open access to research results (presumably in the form of published papers and other output).While the overwhelming majority of projects indicated that they used open access options (ranging from public domain dedication to open access with conditions), Schade and Tsinaraki also found that 14 of the projects they considered used licences with terms that were not consistent with the reuse conditions that the researchers had identified. Clearly there is a need for greater support for projects in developing or choosing appropriate licences.

Although many of the projects indicated that they provided access to their data, the duration of that access was less certain. The authors found that 42% of projects intended to guarantee access to their data only within the lifespan of the project. The authors also found that 40% of projects that provide data access do not provide comprehensive metadata along with the data. This would certainly limit the value of the data for reuse. Both these issues are important in the context of citizen science projects, which are often granted-funded and temporally-limited. The ability to archive and preserve research data and to make it available for meaningful access and reuse should be part of researchers’data management plans, and is something which should be supported by research institutions and funding agencies.

Overall, the Report provides data that suggests that the burgeoning field of citizen science needs more support when it comes to all aspects of data management. Proper data management practices will help citizen science researchers to meet their own objectives, to share their data effectively and appropriately, and to protect the rights and interests of participants.

Note: In 2015 I drafted a report, with Haewon Chung, for the Wilson Center Commons Lab titled Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Citizen Science. This report addresses many licensing issues related to the collection, sharing and reuse of citizen science data and outputs. It is available under a Creative Commons Licence.

Municipal police services in North America now commonly make digital crime maps available to the public online. These interactive maps allow individuals to choose a particular part of their city, as well as a window of time (crimes in the last 7, 14 or 21 days, for example). They can search for all mapped crimes in this time frame or can limit their search to particular types of crime. The results are returned in the form of icons on a map of the selected area. The icons represent different categories of criminal activity, and clicking on each icon will reveal basic information about the incident. The maps can be used for many purposes. For example, someone who is thinking of parking their vehicle overnight in a particular part of the city might search to see if there are many thefts of vehicles or thefts from vehicles in that area. Prospective home buyers or renters might also use the maps to assess the incidence of crime in neighborhoods they are considering. Most crime maps of this kind allow users to sign up for email alerts about crime in their neighborhood, and the maps also provide a means for individuals to send in tips about mapped crimes.

A police service that decides to offer an interactive crime map to the public can choose to create their own crime map (usually by hiring a tech services company to build one) (for examples of this option see the maps from Winnipeg or Halifax) or they can contract with one of a number of leading crime mapping companies in North America. These companies typically offer a range of data analytics services to police. Often the crime maps are offered for free, with the hope that the police service will purchase other analytics services. The 3 leading companies are all based in the United States, but they offer hosting on their platform to police services across North America.

In a new paper that has just been published in the InternationalJournal of e-Planning Research, I look at the practice of crime-mapping in 3 Canadian municipalities – Ottawa, London and Saint John. The police services in each of these cities have contracted with a different one of the 3 leading U.S.-based crime mapping companies. In my paper I consider how these crime maps present particular narratives of crime in the city. These narratives may be influenced in subtle or not so subtle ways by the fact that the mapping platform is U.S.-based. These influences may show up in the rhetoric around the crime maps used by the host company, the crimes or other types of data chosen (or not chosen) for mapping, and the descriptions on the host platforms of the type of data featured on the maps. I also evaluate the quality of the mapped data, and explore how laws shape and constrain the use and reuse of crime data.

While the crime maps are superficially attractive and easy to use, there is reason to be concerned about their use. In my research for this paper, I learned that it is possible to access the maps either through the host company’s site or through the police service’s website. Depending on the route chosen, the messaging (including a description of the mapped data, the purpose of the map, and its limitations) is different. While disclaimers on the police services’ sites may warn of the limitations of the data provided, those who access through the host platform are unware of these deficiencies. The mapped data provide a very partial account of crime in the city, and critics of this type of crime mapping have raised concern both about the potentially misleading nature of the maps, and the particular narrative of urban crime they convey.

My paper also explores issues of control and ownership of the mapped data and the impact that this has on the ability of civil society groups either to critically assess the data or to create other tools and analytics that might combine crime data with other urban data. While the crime mapping platforms do not claim ownership of the data that they map (according to the sites, ownership rests with the police services), they do prohibit the scraping of data from their sites – and there is evidence of legal action taken to pursue data scrapers. In most cases, police services do not make the same data provided to the crime mapping companies available as open data. This allows the police service (in conjunction with the limitations built into the crime mapping platforms) to largely control how the data is presented to the public. At the same time, the presence of a publicly accessible crime map might itself be used by a police service as a justification for not making the same crime data available as open data. (I note that Vancouver, which hired a company to create its own crime map, also makes the mapped data available as open data (although it updates it with less frequency than the mapped data).

Ultimately, the paper asks whether this model of crime mapping advances or limits goals of transparency and accountability, and what lessons it offers about the use of private sector civic technologies to serve public sector purposes.

Can a government cut short the term of copyright protection in the public interest through a regulatory scheme? This question was considered in the recent decision in Geophysical Services Inc. v. Encana. In my previous blog post I discussed the part of the decision that dealt with whether the works at issue in the case were capable of copyright protection. In this post, I consider the regulatory expropriation issues.

Geophysical Services Inc (GSI) had argued that the government had violated its copyright in its compilations of seismic data and in its information products based on this data, when it released them to the public following a relatively short confidentiality period. The data had been submitted as part of a regulatory process relating to offshore oil and gas exploration. GSI also argued that the oil and gas companies which then used this data in their operations, without paying license fees, also violated their copyright. As discussed in my previous post, Justice Eidsvik of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench found that both the compilation of data and the related analytics were original works and were the product of human authorship.

The infringement issue, however, did not end with a finding of copyright in the plaintiff’s works. The outcome of the case turned on whether the government was entitled to release the information after the end of the 5-15 year confidentiality period established by the regulatory regime – and, by extension – whether anyone was then free to use this material without need for permission. The normal term of copyright protection for such a work would be for the life of the author plus an additional 50 years.

GSI was engaged in geological surveying, using seismic testing to create charts of the ocean floor. In order to engage in this activity it needed a permit from the relevant provincial and federal authorities: the National Energy Board, the Canada Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board and/or the Canada Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board. It was also required, as part of the regulatory process to submit its data to the relevant Boards. The process of mapping the ocean floor using seismic testing is time and resource intensive, and requires considerable human expertise. Once it was collected and compiled, GSI would license its data to offshore oil and gas exploration companies who relied upon the quality and accuracy of the GSI product to carry out their activities.

According to the regulatory regime any data or information submitted to a Board must be kept confidential by the Board for a specified period. Disclosure is governed by the Canada Petroleum Resources Act (CPRA). Section 101 of the CPRA provides that documentation submitted as part of the regulatory process is privileged and shall not be disclosed except for purposes related to the regulatory regime. In the case of data or information related to geophysical work, the period of privilege is 5 years. It was agreed by the parties that this meant that the data could not be disclosed without consent for at least 5 years. However, the plaintiff argued that its copyright in the materials meant that even if the privilege expired, the plaintiff’s copyrights would prevent the publication of its information without its consent.

In reviewing the legislative history, Justice Eidsvik concluded that it was the government’s clear intention to stimulate oil and gas exploration by ensuring that exploration companies could get access to the relevant seismic data after a relatively short period of privilege. The proprietary rights of GSI (and other such companies) could be asserted within the privilege period. According to the legislative history, this period was set as the amount of time reasonable to permit such companies to recoup their investment by charging licence fees before the data was made public. Justice Eidsvik found a clear intention on the part of the legislature to limit the copyright protection available in the public interest.The 5-year privilege period was designed to balance the rights of the copyright holder with the broader public interest in oil and gas exploration. She also found that the publication of the data was a form of compulsory licence – oil and gas exploration companies were free to make use of this data once it was released by the Boards. Essentially, therefore, the legislative regime provided for an expropriation – without compensation – of the remainder of the term of copyright protection. According to Justice Eidsvik, the inclusion of a no-compensation clause in the statute “acknowledges Parliament’s intent to confiscate private property in return for a policy it believed to be in the public interest to promote early exploration of its resources in the offshore and frontier lands.” (at para 237)

GSI argued that changes in technology combined with the high cost of collecting and processing the data had disrupted any balance that might have been contemplated in setting the original 5-year privilege period. In fact, although the legislation allows for the publication of the data after 5 years, the practice of the Boards has been to delay the release of the data anywhere up to 15 years. However, GSI still maintained that the balance was no longer fair or appropriate.Justice Eidsvik was clearly sympathetic to GSI’s arguments, but she found that as a matter of statutory interpretation the legislation was clear in its effect. She noted that it would be for Parliament to change the legislation if it needs to be adapted to changing circumstances.

The issues raised by this case are interesting. Copyright law already contains many provisions that aim to balance the public interest against the rights of the copyright holder. Fair dealing is just one example of these. In fact, the term of protection (currently life of the author plus 50 years) is another one of these balancing mechanisms. What the court recognizes in Geophysical Services Inc. v. Encana is that other federal legislation can limit the term of copyright protection in order to advance a specific public interest.

This is not the only circumstance in which copyright may be limited by laws other than the Copyright Act. Another case which has recently been settled without being resolved on the merits (Waldman v. Thompson Reuteurs Canada Ltd.—discussed in my blog post here) raised the issue of whether the open courts principle effectively creates an implied public licence to use any materials submitted to the courts as part of court proceedings. This would include documents authored by lawyers such as statements of claim, factums, and other such documents. In Waldman, these materials had been taken from court records and included in a pay-per-use database by a legal publisher.

There are other contexts in which materials are submitted to regulators and later made public as part of that process. (Consider, for example, patent disclosures under the Patent Act). The legislation in such cases may not be as explicit as the CPRA – Justice Eidsvik found this statute to be very clear in its intent to make this data open and available for reuse after the statutory confidentiality period. In particular, she cited from the parliamentary debates leading up to its enactment in which disclosure in the interest of stimulating oil and gas exploration was explicitly contemplated.

One question going forward is in what circumstances and to what extent do legislated requirements to disclose data or documents terminate copyright protection in these materials. Another interesting issue is whether a provincial government could establish a regulatory regime that effectively brings to an end the term of copyright protection (since copyright falls within federal jurisdiction). In an environment where intellectual property rights are increasingly fiercely guarded, Parliament (and the legislatures?) may need to be more explicit about their intentions to cut short IP rights in the public interest.

A recent news story from the Ottawa area raises interesting questions about big data, smart cities, and citizen engagement. The CBC reported that Ottawa and Gatineau have contracted with Strava, a private sector company to purchase data on cycling activity in their municipal boundaries. Strava makes a fitness app that can be downloaded for free onto a smart phone or other GPS-enabled device. The app uses the device’s GPS capabilities to gather data about the users’ routes travelled. Users then upload their data to Strava to view the data about their activities. Interested municipalities can contract with Strava Metro for aggregate de-identified data regarding users’ cycling patterns over a period of time (Ottawa and Gatineau have apparently contracted for 2 years’ worth of data). According to the news story, their goal is to use this data in planning for more bike-friendly cities.

On the face of it, this sounds like an interesting idea with a good objective in mind. And arguably, while the cities might create their own cycling apps to gather similar data, it might be cheaper in the end for them to contract for the Strava data rather than to design and then promote the use of theirs own apps. But before cities jump on board with such projects, there are a number of issues that need to be taken into account.

One of the most important issues, of course, is the quality of the data that will be provided to the city, and its suitability for planning purposes. The data sold to the city will only be gathered from those cyclists who carry GPS-enabled devices, and who use the Strava app. This raises the question of whether some cyclists – those, for example, who use bikes to get around to work, school or to run errands and who aren’t interested in fitness apps – will not be included in planning exercises aimed at determining where to add bike paths or bike lanes. Is the data most likely to come from spandex-wearing, affluent, hard core recreational cyclists than from other members of the cycling community? The cycling advocacy group Citizens for Safe Cycling in Ottawa is encouraging the public to use the app to help the data-gathering exercise. Interestingly, this group acknowledges that the typical Strava user is not necessarily representative of the average Ottawa cyclist. This is in part why they are encouraging a broader public use of the app. They express the view that some data is better than no data. Nevertheless, it is fair to ask whether this is an appropriate data set to use in urban planning. What other data will be needed to correct for its incompleteness, and are there plans in place to gather this data? What will the city really know about who is using the app and who is not? The purchased data will be deidentified and aggregated. Will the city have any idea of the demographic it represents? Still on the issue of data quality, it should be noted that some Strava users make use of the apps’ features to ride routes that create amusing map pictures (just Google “strava funny routes” to see some examples). How much of the city’s data will reflect this playful spirit rather than actual data about real riding routes is a question also worth asking.

Some ethical issues arise when planning data is gathered in this way. Obviously, the more people in Ottawa and Gatineau who use this app, the more data there will be. Does this mean that the cities have implicitly endorsed the use of one fitness app over another? Users of these apps necessarily enable tracking of their daily activities – should the city be encouraging this? While it is true that smart phones and apps of all variety are already harvesting tracking data for all sorts of known and unknown purposes, there may still be privacy implications for the user. Strava seems to have given good consideration to user privacy in its privacy policy, which is encouraging. Further, the only data sold to customers by Strava is deidentified and aggregated – this protects the privacy of app users in relation to Strava’s clients. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to know if the degree of user privacy protection provided was a factor for either city in choosing to use Strava’s services.

Another important issue – and this is a big one in the emerging smart cities context – relates to data ownership. Because the data is collected by Strava and then sold to the cities for use in their planning activities, it is not the cities’ own data. The CBC report makes it clear that the contract between Strava and its urban clients leaves ownership of the data in Strava’s hands. As a result, this data on cycling patterns in Ottawa cannot be made available as open data, nor can it be otherwise published or shared. It will also not be possible to obtain the data through an access to information request. This will surely reduce the transparency of planning decisions made in relation to cycling.

Smart cities and big data analytics are very hot right now, and we can expect to see all manner of public-private collaborations in the gathering and analysis of data about urban life. Much of this data may come from citizen-sensors as is the case with the Strava data. As citizens opt or are co-opted into providing the data that fuels analytics, there are many important legal, ethical and public policy questions which need to be asked.

Open licences have become a popular means by which works covered by copyright or database rights are made available for use and reuse. In fact, open licences are so popular that even governments are embracing them. Canada’s federal government, for example, has launched its own open government licence, and similar licences have been adopted by provincial and municipal governments. Some open licences contain restrictions (such as on commercial use) – or requirements (such as attribution), while others contain virtually no limitations. Open licences promote sharing of works as well as the creation of new works derived from or built upon the licensed works.

The popularity of open licences, as well as the diverse contexts in which they are developed and used, mean that compatibility between the licences can be a problem for users who wish to combine two or more works that have been made available under open licences. While basic technical interoperability is required when combining digital works, ‘legal interoperability’ is a term used to describe the ability to compile works made available under different open licences in such a manner that the legal status of the resulting compilation is clear. This can be surprisingly challenging. Given that open licences are generally designed to be accessible and user-friendly so as not to stifle creativity under a blanket of legalese, it can be a problem if creators are left having to determine the compatibility of the different rights and permissions set out in a variety of open licences.

This is what makes the newly launched website CLIPOL.org an interesting and potentially important resource. CLIPOL.org is an initiative of the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and was funded in part by Natural Resources Canada through its GeoConnections programme. The website contains a catalogue of open licences from around the world and from a range of different contexts. Two apps are available from the site to use with the licence database. The “text compare” app has two functions. The first allows a user to evaluate the compatibility of different licences in the database. Highlighting and redlining are used to show how the actual licence terms differ in the two licences. The second a schematic comparison of a family of similar licences. The other app available from the site is a compatibility tool which allows users who are thinking of combining works under different licences to assess the extent to which the different licences are compatible.

The website also offers a useful set of resources on open licencing through the link to the CIPPIC Open Governance site, and it provides links to other major sites that deal with open licencing issues.

The project is already publicly available, but it will be formally launched through a free webinar hosted by GeoConnections on February 11, 2014.

The Citizen Call to Action is part of a drive to engage citizens in the goals of the open data movement, notably in promoting transparent and accountable government through free access to a broad range of government data in reusable formats.

The Declaration around which the Call to Action is based calls for governments to take a number of steps considered crucial to fostering open data. The first is to make government data open by default. In other words, unless there is some reason to limit access to data, it should be made freely available, in reusable formats. The Declaration also calls on governments to engage users of data in the process of designing and implementing open data. Engagement can include involving users in identifying priority data sets and in designing initiatives meant to promote open data.

Implicit in the notion of open data is that the data be free:free of restrictions on reuse, free from restrictive or proprietary formats and free from cost. This is a broad concept of “free” data, and it is one that will require the development of common standards and formats within government, as well as co-operation and collaboration between different levels of government to ensure that data is as useful as possible once it is made available. The Declaration encourages governments to invest in capacity building both within government to ensure their own capability to generate and make available high quality, reusable data, but also within user communities. The Declaration also calls for steps to be taken to improve the quality of government data.

Finally the Declaration calls for accountability to be the core value of Open Data, requiring governments to release data that is crucial to keeping government accountable rather than to focus on data sets which are considered nonthreatening to vested political interests. The Declaration also calls for legal and political reforms to further the goals of transparency in government.

The federal government is calling for comments on its Year One progress on Canada’s Action Plan for Open Government.The government is seeking feedback on two main questions, namely: how it has done in meeting its commitments under the Action Plan; which commitments still require the most attention. They are also seeking more general feedback in the form of comments or suggestions regarding its Open Government initiative. The consultation opened on August 19, 2013 and will close on September 9, 2013.

Back in March I wrote about a decision of the Federal Court of Appeal in a dispute over rights in nautical charts and maps. At issue was whether the matter should be resolved on summary judgment or whether it should proceed to trial. The Court decided that it should go to trial. In reaching its decision in the case, the Court made a comment in passing on the wording of a federal government licence agreement that was relevant to the dispute. This comment, which is reproduced in my earlier report on the case, puzzled over the government’s claim in its licence to copyright in its data, given that it was entirely clear in law that there could be no copyright in data.

Leave to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada has just been denied by that Court. This means that the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal stands, and that the matter should now proceed to trial. The case raises some very interesting copyright issues and will be worth following.